


Rewrite

by flowerdeluce



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Missing Scene, Turing Fest Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-18 05:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14846765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerdeluce/pseuds/flowerdeluce
Summary: Like the saloon’s pianola, Maeve's built to dance to someone else’s music. If she's to get out of here, recruit an army, she needs to learn how to rewrite the steps. Her first narrative test on another host should be a simple one, nothing complicated. Don’t run before you can walk. Don’t attract Their attention.Set during series one, episode eight.





	Rewrite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marie_L](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/gifts).



> Thank you for requesting Maeve! Hope you have a great Turing Fest 2018 :)
> 
> *blows a kiss to my beta*

“Maeve picks up her perfume.”

Her arm acts independently, propelled by her instruction. It moves how she’d expect, elegant, purposeful, wrist flexing, fingers enclosing the bottle’s neck with a gentle grip—her every movement is calculated to entice. She allows it, observing with interest.

The command complete, her hand pauses. Waits. Then, like muscle memory, her arm raises the bottle to her throat. She feels it this time, like she’s in control. But is she? This first test of her administrative privileges—on herself—is a success. The blurred line between what’s her and what’s her script is coming into focus.

The bottle is cold against her fingertips, her skin’s heat seeping into the glass. She puts it down.

This is her routine. Every morning she applies her makeup, dabs her perfume, dresses in the same gaudy outfit, never questioning, numb. A short, mindless walk through Sweetwater’s main street follows, before a day’s work at the Mariposa, knocking back drinks on a cumulating tab and catering to the specific whims of men.

She barely remembers the old encounters: hard, loveless fucks on sheets too clean to belong to a place like the Mariposa. (Funny she’d never questioned that.) They happened, though. Turning her hands palm upward, she examines the lines crossing them, the bands where her fingers bend. This body, _her_ body, had been through so much, but it didn’t show. No scars. No visible signs of trauma. It didn’t matter that this body had been replaced, repaired, rebuilt—memory was all she had.

Self-preservation was one personal attribute she’d altered, dragging the bar all the way to the top on the screen with a fingertip. Another was her sensitivity to pain, though that one went all the way to the bottom. Looking at her perfume again, she wonders if she could smash the bottle against the dresser and slam her supple hands into the vicious shards.

The empty wall behind her frames her reflection. This room, her sanctuary, is one of simple decoration. Away from the Mariposa’s reeking clientele, she could be plain, alone with her thoughts and modest possessions without interruption. Though, nothing here is truly hers. Someone replaces the face powder in the dish. Someone washes the blood from her clothes. Someone mended the slash in her corset, where Hector’s blade sunk in—her salvation.

She should dress.

Her loop pulls at her even now, but at least she recognizes it. It’s easy to fall into the routine. Her gaze creeps towards that loose floorboard beneath the rug. The hidden sketches still haunt her from their hiding place, because how many times has she done this? How many times have They stolen her suffering from her?

This time…

This time she’s getting out.

Like the saloon’s pianola, she's built to dance to someone else’s music. If she's to get out of here, recruit an army, she needs to learn how to rewrite the steps. Her first narrative test on another host should be a simple one, nothing complicated. Don’t run before you can walk. Don’t attract Their attention.

Crossing the room, she slides the window open. Heat floods in. The scent of Sweetwater fills her nostrils; she’s never cared to notice it before. Dust of recently trod hooves settles, cart tracks scraped fresh in the sand. Warm conversations bubble in the dry air. Hosts mill past, following sets of interlinking rules. They think they have lives. They worry. They dream. But each of them is a graph on a screen they’ll never see: patience, tenacity, curiosity, charm.

Across the street, deputy Foss leans against the window of the Sheriff’s office, watching the townsfolk pass. The rancher’s daughter approaches him, her sky-blue dress catching his eye. He touches the rim of his hat when she speaks, likely wishing him a good morning, and she walks on.

Maeve fixes her eyes on him. “Deputy Foss removes his hat and wipes his brow,” she says.

But nothing happens. Foss continues to lean and watch, his hat remaining on his head, hands at his sides. Would it be instantaneous?

 

_The little girl’s fragile legs dangle over the edge of the bed, tiny bare feet swinging to and fro. There’s trust in her eyes, her carefree smile. Maeve goes to fetch her daughter’s dress from the wardrobe. The skirt needs darning from where it caught on a yucca. Her daughter waits, patient; the morning’s sunlight behind her paints the edge of her silhouette golden._

 

Maeve blinks. Her reflection peers back at her in her wardrobe’s full-length mirror, confused. It feels natural to open the door, reach for her petticoats, but she catches herself before she can slip into the loop. Her hand tightens on the handle for a moment, resisting.

These intrusive memories must stop. They aren’t real. That little girl, her daughter, isn’t real, not in the way she should be. She’s yet another invention of her captors. These memories, fragments relived with such clarity she almost _tastes_ them, are ways of keeping her where They think she belongs.

With a determined glare at her own reflection, she says aloud: “Maeve forgets her d—”

She can’t form the word in her mouth. It turns to breath on her tongue. Who knows if it’s her programming refusing it or her own innate fear of losing the little girl from her dreams. Try again, then. Learn the limits.

It’s a struggle, her teeth and tongue jamming from the effort, but she manages. “Maeve forgets her daughter.” And she feels overwhelming remorse the moment she hears herself say it, sees her lips speak the words in the mirror.

But, if she remembers saying it, it hasn’t worked. Success might be found in precision. If only she remembered her daughter’s name, not just frenetic fragments.

Flattening a sheet of paper on the dresser, she holds a pencil above, hand poised for a different approach.

“Maeve writes the name of her daughter.”

Delight sparks through her when lead hits paper, but it only jerks out a faint line, barely there at all. She narrows her eyes and repeats the command, fiercer this time. The name is in her somewhere; someone chose to erase it, make her forget, but she’s proof that rules bend, that decisions can be unmade. Her hand trembles.

Still, nothing.

She’ll think it then, search the depths of her sharpened mind, leap from memory trace to memory trace until she finds it: a ghost of syllables and letters forming into a word, a name she once treasured in another life. Sounds scrape together. Many people speak at once. Closing her eyes, she attempts to single a voice from the crowd, but it’s all noise.

Throwing the pencil and paper back into the drawer, she slams it home.

 

_The gunshot forces her stomach to clench around the blade, her whole being convulsing from a sight no mother should ever see. In a blast of sound and gunpowder, her daughter is dead. The light left her eyes before she hit the ground and Maeve knows she can’t save her. But what kind of mother leaves the body of her flesh and blood in the hands of a man like him?_

When she comes back to herself, she’s in the corner by the door, hand clutching her stomach. The dresser chair is on its back, the perfume bottle rolling on its side. She lifts her hand, stares at it. It’s clean but shaking. There’s a whisper, that she should stay where she is, safe in her loop, her little corner of a little world within a larger one. If she keeps on pushing, these memories will keep on returning, she’ll find herself further and further from her goal, mad as a biting sow.

She must find a way to fight this, keep herself grounded. Lifting her chin, she closes her eyes and inhales a leveling breath. She doesn’t have time for these lapses of control. Time was never a concern before, when she lived by sunup and sundown. Then time started slowing before her eyes, distorting, jumping to new places altogether.

Once she’s dressed, she leaves her prison-sanctuary and crosses the main street. Foss smiles when he notices her walking towards him, passing through the flow of the townsfolk already trying to tempt newcomers with the promise of adventure.

Stopping in front of him, she says, succinct and calm, “The deputy makes a gift of his pocket watch to the madam.”

The way Foss’ smile falls fascinates her. His expression twitches on his face as his mind changes course. He complies, reaching into his pocket for the timepiece as though it was his plan all along. When she holds out her hand, he lowers it onto her palm by its long chain.

“A gift,” he says, smile returning, “for my striking neighbor, so people always give her the time of day.”

She squeezes the watch in her fist, triumphant, and when he takes her hand and brings it to his lips, she allows the kiss, giddy with how easy it was.

Striding towards the Mariposa, she weaves the watch chain around her fingers. She's right on time.

At the bar, she observes the hands of Foss’ watch as they tick out a perfect rhythm, never changing course. If she feels time slide like sand through a cattle grid again, she’ll look at the face, fight the memories distracting her from her goal. She can’t lose focus once Hector arrives.

Clementine, the new Clementine, breaks her concentration. “Expecting someone, Maeve?”

“Indeed,” she replies. “We’re due for some out of town guests, and an old flame with an interest in safe-cracking.”

The bartender interrupts. “Hope your guests have some deep pockets. Your tab’s run up higher than a thief’s pulse in church.” It’s the perfect opportunity to keep practicing.

“No. I don’t believe it has,” she says, locking eyes with him. “In fact, Maeve’s tab was in such excellent standing, she deserved a token of gratitude.”

As Foss’ had, the bartender’s face rearranges itself as his thoughts rewrite themselves. 

This was going to be fun.


End file.
